Protests were held outside the Annual General Meeting of British mining company GCM Resources on December 4th over the company’s Phulbari coal mine in Bangladesh.  The protests were held by UK solidarity groups the London Mining Network, Phulbari Solidarity Group, and the UK Committee to Protect Oil-Gas and Mineral Resources in Bangladesh.   

British company GCM Resources was dealt a serious blow today as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) agreed to consider complaints regarding severe human rights violations associated with the company’s planned coal mine in Bangladesh. 

GCM wants to open a massive open-pit coal mine in Phulbari in the north-west of Bangladesh, displacing up to 220,000 people and threatening the Sundarbans, one of the world’s largest remaining mangrove forests and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Amid a flurry of recent protests, strikes, negative press, and shareholder divestment, British coal company GCM Resources’ executive Grahram Taggart resigned last week.

The company has plans to construct an open-pit coal mine in Northern Bangladesh that is widely opposed by local Indigenous Peoples, grassroots organizations, environmentalists and UN Special Rapporteurs. 

On December 20th, activists protesting an open-pit coal mine in Phulbari, Bangladesh dumped coal at the entrance to mining company GCM Resources in London.

Officials have called the approval of the open-pit mine “unlikely” during this government’s tenure, which will last until late 2013 or early 2014.

This comes as great news for the broad movement of people opposed to the Phulbari open-pit coal mining project in northern Bangaldesh, who have been successful in holding off the project for the past six years thus far.

In a new documentary, the people of Phulbari, Bangladesh explain why, since 2005, they have opposed an open pit coal mine that would displace them from their homes, and will continue to oppose the project in the future at any cost.  "We are united," explains one community member.  "Any any cost, we will stay united. We will stay alive in our own place, and if the time comes to die, we shall die in our own place."

A panel of experts appointed by the government have concluded after a year of study that the construction of an open-pit mine in the Phulbari region of northern Bangladesh is a “practical approach”.  The 17 member committee, headed by the former chairman of the national oil company of Bangladesh, was formed a year ago to give opinions on the appropriate coal mining and its implications on social and environmental factors.

With the appointment of a new director, the London-based company GCM Resources is redoubling its efforts to install the Phulbari coal mine in Northern Bangladesh, despite calls by the UN for the project’s immediate halt.